I’ve been slowly going through and updating old posts, and I’ve discovered I’ve written a lot of recipes over the years. Most of them are filled with humor, and tips where I’ve gone horribly wrong. Sometimes it’s a tried and true recipe that I can make almost without thinking about it. Slowly my blog has become my online cookbook where I put all of my tried and true recipes.
(I’m going to say there are affiliate links in here, even though I’m not really sure there will be)
First, many of my recipes are Cooking Around the World
So there are a few dozen recipes with varying results in my Cooking Around the World section, some have become my tried and true recipes which you’ll see specific links to in here. But I am NOT including all of those, because that would be a few hundred recipes added here.
To see more about those recipes (though a few made it in here that I regularly cook)
- Africa Unit
- Asia Unit
- Europe Unit
- North Ameria Unit
- Oceania Unit (and I don’t have this written yet)
- South America Unit
Next, some of my recipes come from the Food Network Cooking Challenge
In my first year or so of blogging a new movie came out Julie and Julia, which was the story of one lady cooking her way through Julia Child’s recipes. I discovered a lot of recipes I really hated. I also wasn’t as adventurous in my cooking or willingness to eat back when I tried this, so a lot of those recipes didn’t go as well as they might have.
I’ve been recooking (yes spellcheck that is totally a word, deal with it) those recipes to see if I still think the same thing and to get some actually decent pictures of the recipes or just outright deleting them.
Sometimes those recipes weren’t worth fixing aside from the humor of how horribly things went wrong.
All of that to say here goes my tried and true recipes
I’m going to divide these into main dishes, desserts, and possibly a few side dishes. Pretty much everything in here has been made over and over again, or at the very least was successfully created at least once.
Some of the main dishes may be special occasion dishes, some are quick and easy no thought required.
Tried and true recipes: main dishes
- Mushroom Madeira Wine Pork Chops– I don’t make this super often but it’s impressive and not too difficult
- crispy chicken bites (I made this a lot more often when the kids were little)
- chicken and dumplings (sadly I’m the only one who really loves this recipe now, so I don’t really get to make it)- I’m gonna add I still do not have a good picture for this, despite making it many times to try and get a picture, but I forget to get the picture and eat it all
- sesame chicken
- chicken teriyaki recipe
- easy chicken soup
- Rosemary pork chops (one of my kids’ favorites)
- skillet cordon bleu (probably my husband’s favorite)
- ham puffs
- homemade hamburger helper
- Cream of mushroom pork chops
- Italian bolognese
- zuppa tuscana
- one pot turkey leftovers
- Spaghetti carbonara– it’s not healthy, but it’s delicious
- easy fish recipe- marinate in Italian dressing and then pan fry, it’s so easy I’m not even bothering with a post
A sub-category of main dish: slow-cooker recipes
I like slow cooker recipes, they are great to start in the morning
- San Marino steak– I’ve probably made this several times this year
- beef stroganoff
- Irish beef stew
- crock pot chicken parmesan
- bavarian pot roast
A sub-category of main dish: crowd pleasers
We frequently have lots of people over at our house, so I’m cooking for 10 people or more. As I kept adding the note to a recipe, this is good for a crowd, I realized it would make sense to shift this down to a sub-section of main dishes.
- homemade pizza (this is super simple and amazingly popular with everyone)- I’ve cooked this many many many times for birthday parties, everyone gets their own personal pizza with all of the toppings they could want.
- Spaghetti– I make giant batches and freeze the rest in individual jars, and use it for any manner of recipes, including as the sauce for the homemade pizza
- Swedish meatballs– add in 5 pounds of baked potatoes with gravy or so roasted potatoes, and you’re golden. Or serve these with spaghetti. Another variation to try: Hawaiian meatballs
- crock pot Chinese pork ribs– you can easily make a large enough batch to serve a big crowd
- pasta salad- I set out all the toppings and everyone just adds whatever they want
Tried and true breakfast
Confession, I don’t really make breakfast at breakfast time. That would imply I’m waking up for that. Instead, if I’m making breakfast, it’s almost certainly breakfast for dinner.
- Mess-free french toast
- stuffed french toast
- Finnish oven pancakes– these, obviously, were from our Finland unit, and I folded the recipe into the country post, no need for two separate posts
- Machanka crepes (Belarus)-these are savory crepes, but they’re delicious if time-consuming, I need to make these again
Tried and true basics
As I went through all of this I realized I had a bunch of basics we make that go into many recipes.
Tried and true desserts
I put quite a few of our traditional desserts up here because we use them frequently in our book and a movie posts, and it makes it so much easier if I can just say go see the recipe.
Huh, as I sit here and go through all of these, that’s a pretty nice stack of recipes I have to pull from. Though, I suspect there are a few more I have buried somewhere in the archives.
